


still your song

by daisysusan



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysusan/pseuds/daisysusan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eduardo isn't sure how he ended up here, but maybe thinking through the history of his relationship with Mark will make things clearer. Post-deposition reconciliation fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	still your song

It started as a quiet rebellion, a murmured _fuck you_ behind a dutiful smile.

(Rebellion had never really occurred to him before, the ambitious perfectionist; he had always been happy to live up to—exceed—expectations. Prep school, Harvard, suits and economics and investment and a four-point-oh come hell or high water; he’d never considered rebellion because he likes those things.)

But he’d been sent off to school with congratulations and best wishes and the unspoken direction to meet people who would _do things_ and _go places_. And it’s Harvard, where everything is doing things and going places, but he knew the right people—old money and wood-paneled walls and mansions in the Hamptons.

Except, and he hides this so well behind designer clothes and impeccable manners and three hundred thousand dollars in oil futures, he’s kind of a nerd. A dweeb. A loser. He actually honest-to-God loved his econ classes (and maybe that’s okay, but he also loved his humanities and social science requirements, and pretty much any class where he got to learn). He likes quiet nights with video games and Discovery channel marathons, and he can’t dance, and he even secretly enjoys the calmness of bad parties with only a few guests.

He sits up halfway, leans against his pillow, lets his head fall back but catches it before it bangs against the wall. Any other time, any other circumstances, and he wouldn’t let his thoughts take this path, but, well, it’s the middle of the night and he’s not particularly interested in moving (and sleep is looking less likely by the minute; he’s wired and happy and still a little perplexed that it all ended up here).

For the first year, he followed his orders to the letter and the spirit, the perfect dutiful son. He studied hard and made straight A’s, went to all the right networking parties, sucked up to his professors with their fingers in the Wall Street pie. And he didn’t make friends, not really. A few acquaintances here and there, the people he lived with or studied with, but no real friends. On his breaks, his father asked about the people he’d met, how they would help him take the world by storm; he answered dutifully and truthfully but without heart. (It was a lonely year.)

A couple weeks into his first-semester economics class the next year, he started passing notes with the (freshman) boy who sat next to him; at first, it was sarcastic commentary on an especially dry lecture, but at the beginning of the next one, he saw that the first thing scribbled in the corner of the boy’s notes was _hi, I’m Dustin_. Without a thought, he wrote back _I’m Eduardo, nice to meet you_.

Over the next few weeks, the corners and spaces of Dustin’s notes filled up with more sarcastic comments, then games of tic-tac-toe, then epic stick figure battles with swords and catapults and once, memorably, a shark, the participants hanging off graphs and filling every square inch of the page. (He started having fun, then, not paying perfect attention every moment—but his notes were still impeccable, color-coded and free of doodles, and he still aced all his tests and set the curve on most of them and, well, what his father didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him because everything still _looked_ perfect.)

So when Dustin nudged him and pointed to a corner of his notebook where he’d scribbled _wanna come over and play Halo tonight with some guys_ , he thought for just a moment about cool parties and mixers and networking before adding in the omitted question mark and his response of _sure, what time?_

(And he consoled himself just a little bit by thinking that it’s _Harvard_ where everyone is doing something exciting and Dustin’s kind of brilliant anyway, studying economics even though there are bits of code scribbled in his notebook between the graphs and the anatomically-incorrect doodles of dinosaurs, and acing the all tests despite his apparent lack of attention.)

Hours later, when he knocked on Dustin’s door, it was answered not by Dustin but by a curly-haired guy. “I’m Mark,” he said perfunctorily, “And Dustin’s too busy wrestling Chris for the remote to answer the door.” He introduced himself as he stepped into the room, noting that someone he didn’t know—presumably Chris—was pinning Dustin to the sofa and holding a remote control just out of his reach.

They spent the night flopped messily around the room, buzzed off cheap beer and trying to teach him to be slightly less hopeless at Halo and arguing cheerfully about everything that came up.

And then it became a regular thing, the four of them. Sometimes they stayed in and sometimes they went out, but mostly he and Mark just spent half their lives in Dustin’s room, even if they were just studying or coding (Mark) or reading (him). (Chris spent his whole life there, half because he and Dustin got along like a house on fire and half because his roommate had a lot of noisy sex.) It was so easy to be with them, practically joined at the hip (they coordinated their second semester schedules so they could all get lunch together on Fridays), that he stopped worrying about connections and getting in with the right crowd.

So maybe it wasn’t all rebellion, not really. His first decision, a _fuck you_ to his father that would never be heard, maybe that was rebellion. But after that, it was just about having friends—Dustin, who could make a rock laugh; Chris, who understood his love of learning and also Dustin’s absurd sense of humor.

And Mark. Mark, who was everything he himself wasn’t—sloppy and careless with his appearance, obsessive and single-minded in his interests, caustically witty to the point of meanness. But they clicked, fit better than he’d ever fit with someone else; with Mark, he let some of the sarcastic commentary that had been running in his head for years bubble to the surface. And Mark was smart; smarter than he was himself, smarter than anyone he’d ever known.

(It’s hard, now, to look back and not see that Mark beat him at his own game as well, a shrewd and calculating businessman, friendship be damned. The understanding, universal as it is, stings his perfectionist soul: there’s always someone better.

It still hurts a little, knowing his father would be proud of Mark.)

Starved for intellectual challenges as he was, it’s hard to blame his past self for diving headlong into their friendship. Certainly, he hadn’t been alone in doing so—they were both staying up until the wee hours absorbed in ideas and video games and crazy schemes to change the world (because they were young and at Harvard and the world was their oyster). Watching the sun rise over the Yard, laughing, so tired that their wild ideas had delusions and their delusions made sense. Having a best friend was a weird feeling, having someone who listened and _kept up_ when he babbled about meteorology, who had his own passions to ramble about. (In another life, he remembers thinking, he would have liked coding; meticulous and logical and full of formulas and algorithms.)

Maybe he should learn, he thinks, grinning to himself at the wildness (the absurdity) of the idea. But he’s a billionaire and he’s smart and, well, the world is still his oyster because what the latter can’t get him, the former can.

(He tries not to think about it too much, that Caribbean night and a thousand dollars—and one insane, perfect idea—turned into six hundred million users and fifty billion dollars and a Wikipedia page for fucking Facebook stalking. He tries not to think too hard that they may well have changed the goddamn world.)

When he went home for the summer after sophomore year, he realized what he’d done that time around; followed his father’s instructions to the letter while completely missing the point. His struggle to keep a shit-eating grin off his face while his father grilled him about connections—not friends, connections—was incredible.

(With a detached sort of surprise, he realizes that he’s never thought through that part of the story before. Gretchen, Sy, they never asked. For all that the depositions were an unraveling of his friendship with Mark, no one cared why they were friends in the first place.)

Of course, the next year and a half is a different situation entirely. He’s rehashed it too many times, most of them with lawyers hanging on his every word; it’s like reading _Romeo and Juliet_ —everything starts out wonderfully but he knows it’s going to go to shit before the end.

The first semester of his last year, he took a lighter-than-average course load—his father objected, but in the end the promise of money, success, renown won out. Unfortunately, that left him with less to concentrate on when it all went bad and he wanted nothing so much as the chance to dive into anything that might distract him.

He stumbled into his favorite coffee shop the morning he got back from California, jetlagged and angry and _hurt_ (wishing for more classes to bury himself in, for more term papers to write), and seeing Chris’s familiar blond head drooping over his laptop at the big table in the corner. (He remembered Dustin begging Chris to come out, for the party, telling him it would be amazing; he remembered Chris’s protestations that he had three exams that week, that he needed to study.) Papers covered the table around the laptop. Chris looked frantic and worried, even while mostly asleep. Wedged between his shoulder and his sagging head was a cell phone.

Crossing the room quickly (or as quickly as his fuzzy, sleep-deprived mind allowed), he grabbed Chris’s phone and closed his laptop without looking at the work on the screen. As he tilted Chris towards the table, he shoved the sweatshirt that had previously been thrown haphazard on the table under his cheek. His face buried in the sweatshirt, Chris mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “Leemee lone, Duttin.”

From Chris’s cell, still in his hand, he heard a tinny “Chris? … Chris? Chris, are you okay?” Looking at the phone’s screen, he saw that Chris was on a four-and-a-half hour call with “D-MAN.”

(He’s pretty sure that Chris has never changed that contact, that he’s now a responsible, mature adult who gets phone calls from what is probably the only person saved in his phone as anything other than mundane the first-name-last-name.)

He gritted his teeth and said into the phone, “He fell asleep, Dustin.”

There was a long silence on the other end. Then, “Eduardo?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Shit,” Dustin said flatly.

“Well put. Look, I’m not dealing with you. I just … I’m not. I just didn’t want you to worry about Chris. I’ll keep an eye on him, but I’m not talking to you.”

Without waiting for an answer (or an apology or an explanation or, god forbid, for Dustin’s easy camaraderie to tempt him into a conversation), he hung up.

(It’s not worth feeling guilty about that; Dustin, for all his absurd behavior, is surprisingly good at _getting_ people. Their mutual forgiveness—for misplaced anger, for collusion, for a fight that was kind of stupid in the first place—was easy and uncomplicated. He likes that, Dustin’s easy optimism about friendship and life.)

He rubs his eyes absently, reminding himself it’s no use crying over (metaphorical) spilled milk. Besides, he’s not really inclined to complain about where it’s landed him now.

A few days later, Chris showed up outside his room, knocking softly. He was seriously considering not opening it when Chris yelled, “Wardo, open up. Mark is a fucking asshole; just because I’m still working for him doesn’t mean I’m actually speaking to him!”

Against his better judgment, he opened the door.

Chris promptly launched into what could best be described as a monologue (it was very Shakespearean; _god_ he sometimes wished Chris weren’t a lit major).

“Look, I’m still working for Facebook, but only because it’s a job and a damn impressive job and I’m not entirely sure anyone else could even put up with Mark’s shit, much less keep it from blowing up in his face, but I have not spoken a word to him since Dustin told me what happened. He’s pissed at me for it, because Sean got caught doing coke with some underage interns, but I’m doing everything through Dustin cause if I actually had to talk to him I’d probably end up fired.”

He paused for breath.

“And Dustin … I’m pretty sure he told Mark to go fuck himself. Probably in those exact words, possibly in more detail. Honestly, I’m not sure how he didn’t get fired for that.”

(He knows, knew even then, how Dustin kept his job, because Mark likes smart people and, more than that, he likes smart people who speak their minds and stick up for themselves, and he knows that Mark trusts Dustin as much as he’s ever trusted anyone—

Except him.)

It floats across his mind, unbidden but not entirely unwelcome, the recollection that Mark wasn’t just his best friend, but he was Mark’s. He thinks about that less than he should, maybe, less than Mark deserves. But he knows, he’s always known, because pragmatic—always so very pragmatic—Mark came to him with thefacebook even though the Winklevosses had money. And Mark was smart enough to know what the eighteen thousand dollars meant, not _this is a good idea_ but _you’re my best friend and I trust your vision_. (Even if he didn’t, even if he kept looking for advertisers, that was still what the money meant.)

He’s glad, as he sits in the darkness, teasing the corner of the sheet between idle fingers, that they’ve never lied, tried to say it was just business (not after Mark’s first feeble attempt, anyway).

But he’s getting ahead of himself, he thinks, taking a deep breath.

“Fuck, Wardo,” Chris said, leaning against the doorframe. “I haven’t even … fuck.”

There were huge bags under Chris’s eyes, he noticed, and he looked unsteady.

“Are you okay?” he asked (before he remembered that he shouldn’t care so much).

Chris looked hesitant. “I haven’t been sleeping much. It’s not a big deal.”

“At least sit down. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

Flopping gratefully into the couch, Chris nodded. “Yeah, I feel like it. I had a big history paper, and then Sean got fucking arrested with cocaine and underage fucking interns, Wardo, what the fuck is wrong with him? And then, even when I’ve had time to sleep, I’ve too pissed off to close my eyes.”

Chris sighed. “I hate him so much.”

He sank into the couch next to Chris, and muttered “Which one?” only a little resentfully.

“I don’t even know. I honestly don’t know if I hate Mark or Sean more right now.”

(He knew then, just as he knows know, that the answer was Sean. Because Chris, for all his anger and commiseration and exhaustion, was and is too loyal to really despise Mark forever.)

Things got better from there, just a little bit. And slowly. But they got a little better just for having Chris around, a friend who appreciated quiet nights spent reading or watching TV or studying in the not-stressful way. (It was probably a good thing that he was in the Phoenix or his general homebody-ness and unhappiness would have kept him from leaving his room for anything but class.) It was easy to be friends with Chris, they always fit so comfortably together even without Mark’s brilliance (and cutting humor) and Dustin’s perpetually mood-lightening silliness.

But he still struggled. Seeing his friendship with Mark boiled down to that number, that Mark didn’t value him at thirty percent or thirty-five percent, that he was worth less than one percent of this stupid project that was his best friend’s life, it stuck with him for a long time. And sometimes Chris’s phone would ring and he’d look up guiltily from the caller ID and mutter that he needed to take it, then disappear into the hall for a long stretch, because it was Dustin (or maybe Mark, maybe they were speaking again, he never asked).

And he didn’t exactly tell his lawyers, either, that he was spending weeknights with Facebook’s PR guy sprawled across his couch muttering viciously about his history professor (and he justified it to himself by saying that they never talked about Facebook anyway, and to the part of him still pleasing his father by saying that Chris was brilliant and motivated and wouldn’t work for Facebook forever because it didn’t fit into his grand schemes and world-changing plans).

So he hung out with Chris and made connections through the Phoenix (his father liked that) and worked on the counter-suit against his best friend, and then he was graduating, because time has a funny way of passing quickly even when every moment feels deathly slow. (He remembers pointedly not thinking, as he returned to his seat, about how Mark should have been sitting in the audience, uncomfortable and bored, because that’s what people do for their best friends.)

(Things got better after Harvard, for all that the depositions hurt him down to his soul. It was easier not walking past places that reminded him of Mark, of the best friend he’d ever had, of the thrill of seeing something amazing and knowing that he’d helped.)

But even before that, before he left for good, things started looking up a tiny bit (thanks, as usual, to Chris).

He pressed through the crowd after the ceremony, looking his parents or—well, for anyone, really. Craning his neck, he saw someone who looked like Chris (damn mortarboards really did make everyone look the same). Before he could head towards maybe-Chris, though, he was halted by a slew of backslaps and shouts of “Congratulations, man!” from his fellow Phoenix members.

By the time he managed to extricate himself and head towards maybe-Chris (who had taken off his mortarboard and was definitely Chris), the crowd was beginning to thin and a few determined guests had forced their way in. He was within ten feet of his destination when a figure _not_ dressed in crimson robes shouted, “Chris, dude, you left out the _magna cum laude_ part! Congrats! Even though it doesn’t count because it’s liberal arts, I’m proud of you!” (He could practically hear Chris’s eyes rolling.) The yelling figure then proceeded to hug Chris enthusiastically, attempting to spin him around like the happy couple at the end of a bad movie. (It failed rather spectacularly, both because their heights were all wrong and because there was not nearly enough space for the maneuver.)

He shouldn’t have been surprised, he reflects. Dustin and Chris had always been inseparable; being on opposite coasts for the better part of two years was probably torturous for them. (During the time they were both in Palo Alto, he remembers how much more Chris carried himself, how much more easily he smiled.) Now, looking back, he is ashamed of how tempted he was to leave, to let his resentment keep him from congratulating his good friend. But he pushed forward despite his misgivings.

“Hey, Chris,” he began once he was within earshot for not-yelled words. (Chris still looked shellshocked and a little dizzy, Dustin grinning manically.)

“Wardo!” Chris called, walking towards him. “How does it feel to be a graduate?”

He smiled. (It was the face-splitting one he used to wear constantly around Mark; a year later, his muscles are unused to it.) “I don’t know, you tell me.”

Instead of answering, Chris grabbed him in a tight hug, saying “We did it” gleefully.

When they broke apart, he noticed Dustin watching them, discomfort radiating from his face (and the rest of him as well). Dustin approached them slowly, clearly worried that he would leave or punch him or … (Well, Dustin’s fears weren’t entirely unfounded, given that they hadn’t spoken since Chris fell asleep in the coffee shop, and their last face-to-face meeting had ended with Mark’s computer in pieces and almost-thrown punches and a lawsuit that was still underway).

Dustin stepped forward. “Congratulations, Eduardo,” he said cautiously.

“Thanks, Dustin,” he said with a smile that was only a tiny bit forced.

“Look, man, I know the last year has been rough, but you just graduated from Harvard, so I’m going to hug you now.”

And before he could have protested (not that he was going to), Dustin hugged him. It wasn’t the bone-crushing tackle of a hug Chris had received, but it wasn’t half-hearted, either. That was something, he knew, a step in the right direction, towards recovering and moving on and all those things that healthy people did.

Dustin spoke again. “Look, I know it’s not enough, but for what little it is worth, I didn’t know until they’d already drawn up the papers, until it was too late to stop anything. And I’m sorry. So sorry. If it’s any comfort at all, I didn’t speak a word to Mark outside of work for months, and Chris didn’t talk to him at all.”

He swallowed hard and gave the answer that he knew was wrong. “Thanks. That’s worth something. But I, uh, can’t talk about it with you. Or anyone, really, but especially not anyone who works for Mark.”

“Oh, because you’re …” Dustin said, his face closing off slightly.

“Yeah, I …”

Chris cut in, thank goodness, before it got any more uncomfortable. “Look, I know it’s weird right now, but you guys are my best friends and I _know_ that you were friends before either of you met Mark. So Eduardo and his parents are going to go out tonight, and Dustin, you’re going to come out with me and my parents. And then tomorrow all three of us are going to go get burgers for dinner to celebrate that Wardo and I graduated from Harvard. Got it?”

Cowed, he and Dustin nodded.

(He should send Chris a note or flowers or a present worth more than the GDP of one of the smaller countries in Africa. If it weren’t for Chris’s steadfast resolution not to let the problems with him and Mark tear all four of them apart, he’s certain he wouldn’t have Dustin’s comforting silliness or Chris’s steady understanding or much of anything else. His last year at Harvard without Chris’s easy empathy and laughter and constant, _constant_ support are not something he particularly wants to contemplate at length, not when everything is so much better now, when he is happy and curled up in bed and grinning like the dopiest idiot who ever lived even as he considers the worst years of his life.)

And dinner the next night was good, full of smiles and memories and Chris’s stories about the awful people on his hall (who, among other things, thought three in the morning during finals week was a good time to get blazed and blast the Grateful Dead); apropos of nothing at all, Dustin related that, the week before, he’d had a nightmare in code and then they were laughing because really, was there anyone other than Dustin who would dream about being chased around his room by a run-time error?

That night, before they drifted apart on the sidewalk, Dustin hugged him (again) and said, seriously, “I know you can’t talk about the stuff, but I’m your friend, and if you ever need something, I will absolutely be there for you.”

Almost against his will, he smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Dustin.”

So things got a little better.

Of course, they didn’t stay better for long, because the next phase of his life was the depositions and all the agony of rehashing every painful moment of his ruined friendship with Mark. And he was avoiding Chris and Dustin for the most part, since they were too close to the other side, to Mark and Facebook. He didn’t speak to either of them for the duration of the depositions, not until he was on the other side with money and shares and a non-disclosure agreement and, he hoped (at the time, anyway, he thinks with a smile he can just _feel_ is fond), no reason to ever talk to Mark again.

It wasn’t a good time for him (unsurprisingly), he remembers, curling in on himself a little bit. But he’s past the two low points of his middle-of-the-night retracing of his life. He started talking to Chris and Dustin again as soon as the lawsuit was over (and, as it turned out, having friends was a big boost to his emotional stability).

He was a lot of things during the years between when he was cut out of Facebook and when he managed to get his life sort of mostly together again; he was hurt, he was sad, he was lonely. But he spent surprisingly little time being angry. (The stinging bitterness that edged, sometimes, into hatred was there, but it rarely had the force of ire behind it.)

Anger was never something he was particularly comfortable feeling. It was out-of-control and consuming and _tiring_. More than anything, it was tiring. And his father was angry, sometimes it felt like he was angry all the time. He didn’t want to be like his father.

(Maybe he shouldn’t have spent as much as he did trying not to be like his father while still wanting to please him. It was a bad combination of rebellion and submission and, really, it only made them both unhappy. He should have picked rebellion, perhaps, severed himself completely from his father’s wishes and, with the same breath, stopped trying to impress him. And he should have done it years ago, before his inability to choose between the two split him in half and left him stranded in New York without his best friend.)

(Self-flagellation isn’t health, he reminds himself.)

But he wasn’t angry, not really, even sitting in the deposition room staring at Mark’s hoodie-over-tie getup (what the fuck was he even doing with that?), just hurt and confused. He’d been so angry that summer in Palo Alto and when he saw the papers, but anger like that burns itself out quickly and by the time he was staring at Mark across the table, it no longer made his stomach seize up to think about everything they’d accomplished together. Instead, it just left him feeling empty, blank even. Like being told that Santa Claus wasn’t real, only a hundred times worse.

(The feeling of blank emptiness wasn’t fun, but it worked out for the best, because when they did run into each other, he managed to refrain from punching Mark in the face.)

It was bound to happen eventually, he was too smart to not have realized it. An investor and an Internet visionary; they both attended networking parties thinly disguised as charity events. But he did hope that Mark would have the decency to ignore him, or _something_.

No such luck, he realized with a sinking feeling. Mark was walking towards him with purpose.

“Um, hi,” Mark began, standing shiftily in front of him. “We … um, I …”

He tried to resist the urge to smirk. (Because for all that he wasn’t angry, per se, asking him not to take a little pleasure in Mark’s obvious discomfort was just too much.)

(He’s glad he didn’t, because he thinks that he would regret that more than anything else in his messed-up life, that he would regret taking Mark’s attempt to be a decent person and throwing it back in his face.)

“We can’t just ignore each other,” Mark managed to force out. “It’s too weird. Too many people know that we know each other, and that you’re a Facebook shareholder.” He extended his hand, launching into the line that some intern had clearly made him recite so as not to botch it. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Saverin. I hope all your business ventures are going well.”

He nodded once, shaking Mark’s hand quickly and trying not to grin a little meanly at his uncharacteristic formality. “Okay. I can handle civil.”

Mark smiled wanly, hesitantly. (The urge to smile at his nervousness was nearly unbearable. He resisted; it was the urge of a best friend. They lost the privilege of laughing at each other a long time ago.)

Instead, he said, “Don’t worry, civil entails me not breaking any more of your possessions,” and Mark’s smile became a little truer.

So they were civil. They didn’t seek each other out, but nor did they avoid each other (except being alone, they both avoided that). Though inane conversations were not unusual (weather, uncontroversial current events, Chris and Dustin’s hijinks), the norm was nods and a quiet “Mark”—“Eduardo” exchange. But Silicon Valley has a short memory, and their lawsuit never made headlines, not the way the Winklevosses’ did, so the next development was as inevitable as ending up at the same cocktail party.

It happened like something out of a bad romantic movie, or maybe just a screwball comedy. James Alway—whose start-up he’d just invested in—introduced him to an app developer named Alex Branson, who promptly turned away and tapped a man who turned out to be Mark on the shoulder, saying “You have got to meet these guys.” Before he even processed what was happening, Alex had said, “Mark, this is James Alway, and his chief investor, Eduardo Saverin. James, Eduardo, this is Mark Zuckerberg.”

He looked at Mark, and Mark looked back at him, and all of a sudden they were laughing, clutching at the hor d'oeuvre table to stay upright, because apparently they were so good at civil that people didn’t even realize they knew each other. He felt tears building up in his eyes, and it was clear that the universe wasn’t on his side because he _could not stop laughing_ and neither could Mark. Their respective acquaintances were staring at them, clearly not getting the joke (mostly because there wasn’t one). Finally, James said, “I think there’s something we’ve missed.” (Could James and Alex know _less_ about the people they were working with, he wondered.)

Wiping his eyes, he forced out, “We went to Harvard together.”

Mark gave him an almost-withering glare. (It would have been more effective if he hadn’t clearly been struggling to keep a straight face.) “That’s the understatement of the century. Wardo used to do my laundry when I was too spaced out to remember it. Which was pretty much all the time.”

He smiled at that (and it was _real_ , he felt it in his stomach—and if he were feeling poetic, in his soul). “I also used to put him to bed when he would stay up coding for thirty-six hours. It was a lot like being his mother.” (Mark looked like he wanted to punch him, but in a good-natured way, not an I-hate-your-breathing-guts way.)

“And he’s a co-founder of Facebook,” Mark said.

Then the whole mood twisted into awkwardness, and they kind of looked at each other sideways before Mark muttered something about needing to go talk to someone who conveniently happened to be all the way across the room.

But it also changed everything, like some sort of strange switch flipped in his mind. It was absurd and maybe a little twisted, but he felt so much more comfortable around Mark, like just knowing Mark was in the same room no longer made his stomach shift unpleasantly now that they’d successfully interacted (however briefly) without shifting uncomfortably and glaring daggers at each other.

He felt immeasurably lighter, knowing that maybe his grudge wasn’t worth holding (just because they weren’t friends didn’t mean they had to seethe silently every time they were in the same room). So he relaxed, a little, which led to him drinking more freely, which, in turn, led to him draping himself across the sofa in Chris’s living room.

It was far too easy to forget, after a couple of cocktails, that he still hated Mark (just a little bit, as much as he was ever capable of hating Mark and as much as it was worth his time and energy to bother). He probably shouldn’t have had the last drink, he thought at the time, because he was just buzzed enough to agree that crashing in Chris’s guest room would be easier than getting a hotel after the horrifyingly dull charity … thing. But he did agree, and he ended up sitting on Chris’s couch playing whatever the newest version of Halo was, with Chris kicking his ass (as always) and Dustin cheering them both on enthusiastically. (“Go, Chris! You can get him!” he yelled, and “Wardo, actually use your controller, you can do it!”)

And _Jesus Christ_ , it was so much like the suite in Kirkland that hadn’t even been his but he’d basically lived there anyway (except Mark wasn’t sitting next to him, drunk and sarcastic and hilarious, giving them all commentary on their gaming skills). Chris and Dustin were so similar, sitting half on top of each other, poking and ribbing each other and he’s always been pretty sure that poking on Facebook was added when Dustin just _would not stop_ actually physically poking Chris (usually when Chris needed to actually be concentrating, because Dustin wouldn’t be _Dustin_ otherwise). And when they all fell asleep like drunken college students, piled together, it felt just a little empty because Mark wasn’t there to kick him in the shins at four in the morning.

(He’s always been a slightly nostalgic drunk.)

Life kept on going, after his surprisingly-not-awkward encounter with Mark. He went back to work and went out with his friends and talked to Chris and Dustin frequently.

(The day Chris called him, voice low but excited, to say that he was going to work for Senator Obama, he thought a lot of things. He thought of Dustin, left to the wilds of Silicon Valley by his best friend and left alone to handle Mark. He thought, briefly, of Mark, with his best friends drifting away one by one. Mostly he thought of Chris, finally pursuing his dream of shaping the future though people not technology. He’s proud of him, for taking the risk and going after something he’s always wanted.

Dustin was less enthusiastic, a few hours later, speaking soft and unusually serious about being torn between wanting Chris to be happy and wanting him to stay in California, and feeling guilty about the latter.)

When he sat and thought for too long, sometimes, on long flights or when he couldn’t sleep, it felt off to be close with Chris and Dustin but not Mark, given how clearly the four of them had been split at Harvard, inseparable Chris and Dustin, and inseparable him and Mark. But life goes on and people grow up and seeing Mark, then, still made his heart hurt with betrayal and the thought of what might have been.

He smiles at that recollection. He’s so happy with where everything ended up now, that regretting the steps (even the most painful) is difficult.

(Growing up changes everything.)

The next time he and Mark were at a dinner together, Mark sought him out again. He was standing on the porch outside the blandly forgettable dining room, drinking a glass of mediocre wine and staring sightlessly over the unimpressive landscaping. Mark tapped him once on the shoulder, nodding slightly and saying “Hello, Eduardo.”

“What do you want, Mark?” he replied, terse (and perhaps, in hindsight too harsh; at the time, he still would have considered ignoring Mark—or punching him—somewhat justified. But he knows, now, what Mark approached him to say and that changes his perspective on everything.)

“Hey, I, um,” Mark trailed off, picking at his shirtsleeves, before squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath.

“I ... Chris and Dustin made me swear I wouldn't ask you to forgive me because that's emotional manipulation. I guess. But I'm sorry I handled everything like, well, like a nineteen-year-old jackass.”

The short laugh that escaped him wasn’t entirely voluntarily. “Yeah,” he replied to fill the lengthening silence. “Thanks. That means something.”

Mark nodded once and turned to walk away, pausing before he took a step. “Thanks for not punching me, or, I don’t know, calling me a bitch on the Internet. I would have deserved it.”

Before he could answer (not that he had any idea what to say), Mark disappeared into the flow of the party.

He stood out on the balcony for a long time after that, reeling from the idea that Mark would apologize, and for something real, a true admission of error on his part (with the words spelled out, not through implication and acknowledgement).

He was glad the next time they ran into each other and he was glad it didn’t take long to happen. Seizing his opportunity when Mark was standing alone, he walked over and said, shortly, “This doesn’t mean I forgive you, but I’m sorry, too.”

Then he walked away.

(Cowardice, he knows, to not wait and see how that conversation played out. But he thinks that after everything, after the messy mixture of friendship and business that led both to even messier ends, he was entitled to a bit of cowardice. Not putting himself out there for Mark to gut viciously again, he doesn’t regret that.)

After the settlement, he never intended to be friends with Mark again. (Hell, he never intended to Mark to speak again.) It never occurred to him, as he signed the papers, full of hurt and heartbreak and bitterness, that there was _anything_ Mark could do, that he himself could do, to overcome _left behind_ and _point-zero-three percent_ and _lawyer up, asshole_ and _you had one friend_.

(It was a stupid thing to say, he knows. It wasn’t true, he knew it, Mark knew it, Chris and Dustin—such good friends they managed to stay on speaking terms with both parties—knew it. But sitting there in the deposition room, rehashing exactly how he ended up suing his best friend, it just hurt so goddamn much. All he wanted in that moment was to piss Mark off, to make him hurt just as much.

He regrets it a little, now. But mostly he doesn’t think about it, because dwelling on things he can’t take back isn’t worth his time; life lessons from Dustin Moskovitz.)

But the next time he saw Mark, after the apologies, their customarily cursory exchange … wasn’t.

“Mark,” he said.

“Eduardo,” Mark said. Then, “How’s Singapore?”

He gaped for a moment. ( _Small talk_ , he thought, like it was a new concept entirely.) “It’s, um, it’s good. The weather is nice, it reminds me a bit of São Paulo.”

Mark smiled. “I’ve always wanted to go, but there hasn’t been time.”

Before he even processed the thoughts in his head, his mouth opened. (Oh _God_ , he remembers thinking, do I not even have a filter anymore?) “You would like it; it’s all very modern.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.” Mark paused for a moment, hesitated. “How’s the food?”

(The small talk about trivialities was another change, he realized later, in addition to Mark’s new ability to apologize.)

“It’s really good,” he answered.

“Have you had bubble tea?” Mark asked. “I know it’s Chinese, but Singapore is close. And it’s really good. There’s a place near Stanford …”

“Yeah, I have,” he said. “I’ve been on a couple of trips to China, but there are some places in Singapore, too.”

And then, before Mark can continue with his slightly awkward attempts at conversation, he cut in. “We should talk. Somewhere without cheap wine and people from Valleywag.”

Mark frowned.

“Because we apologized that but doesn’t _begin_ to cover everything, Mark,” he said.

“Oh,” came the soft reply. Then, “You want to cover the other things, too?” Mark sounded so terrified, so desperately hopeful in that moment, that it took all of his willpower not to smile reassuringly like they were back at Harvard, like they were still friends.

“Yeah, I do,” he answered instead. “But in the meantime, how’s California?”

Mark responded easily, and though some process (or fluke) that he still doesn’t understand, it turned into a real conversation (nothing world-shaking, but more than trivialities). He was surprised, then, by how comfortable he was talking to Mark. Just the knowledge of mutual repentance changed a lot, allowed them to talk about their lives (which were and are mostly business; they had both always been workaholics).

After, Chris dragged him aside, his mouth a thin line.

“What are you doing?” he asked harshly, almost angry.

When there was no answer (really, he had no idea what was he was doing), Chris continued, “That was a 40-minute conversation, and, if you didn’t notice, you were talking to Mark.”

“Jesus, Chris,” he replied with a shrug, “I have no idea. At least we managed it without killing each other?”

Chris shook his head and rubbed his temples. “Eduardo,” he said flatly, “It’s Mark. The last time you two were speaking, it ended with vandalism, your friends being forced to choose between you—which sucked, by the way—and a _six hundred million dollar lawsuit_. You are a very good friend, and I’d rather not have to pick up those pieces again. I don’t want you to go through that again.”

“Believe me,” he answered, “I never want to feel that way again, either.”

“Look, I just want you to be happy.”

He’s glad of Chris’s caution, keeping him grounded and making it hard to throw himself into the friendship the way he had at Harvard. There were other factors making that level of single-minded devotion difficult, of course; distance, and their devotion to their jobs, and his own reluctance to trust Mark again.

But despite all that, a few weeks later, he found himself sitting in a New York coffee shop across from Mark, who was speaking low but surprisingly confident.

“I really am sorry,” he said. “I was so pissed, though. I got so angry that I made a business decision personal. When you froze the account, I think I decided that you were trying to screw Facebook over, and me by extension. So I screwed you over.”

Silence lingered for a moment.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Wardo. It was such a shitty thing to do. You earned more than point-zero-three percent of Facebook and I’m glad you have more now.”

“Yeah,” he said, resisting the urge to gape, “Yeah. I was kind of trying to screw you over. I was mad at you for listening to Sean instead of me and for saying I was getting left behind.”

(He had been, young and arrogant and maybe a little jealous that someone else was stealing his best friend even if he didn’t know it at the time, convinced that he could do no wrong, that three years of college had taught him everything he needed to know.)

Mark nodded.

“We’re both guilty of being immature jackasses,” he added.

Mark laughed wryly. “That we are.”

Silence gathered around them, until Mark broke it by saying “Did we really just have a whole conversation about our feelings?”

“I think we did,” he answered, laughing, “Well, I can add that to the list of things I thought you’d never do that you’ve proven me wrong about.”

“Oh really? What else is on that list, may I ask?”

He grins deviously. “I definitely never imagined you of all people would revolutionize _interpersonal communication_. Or be able to do your own laundry. Do you even do your own laundry?”

Mark threw a napkin at him, but then sobered. “If screwing over my best friend is on that list … I really am sorry. You weren’t the right CFO for Facebook—”

“I know,” he cut in.

“But still,” Mark continued, ignoring him, “I only diluted your share that much because I was pissed off and I never should have done it. It was the business equivalent of getting drunk and saying offensive things about your bra size on my blog.

“Except, of course,” Mark finished awkwardly, “You don’t have a bra size.”

When he burst out laughing at that, it occurred to him for the first time that they might actually be able to salvage a friendship from the wreckage they created. Sitting at a cramped coffee shop table, he felt a comfort he hadn’t felt since nights at Harvard, falling asleep on the couch in Kirkland and making fun of Dustin’s inability to contain his exuberance while drunk.

(Things weren’t perfect after that, but it was a beginning, a foundation. It was something that could hold up the rest of their cautious, hesitant new friendship.)

And that was exactly how they built it up again, slow and meticulous and so painfully careful that sometimes he just wanted to go all in and have his best friend back, no questions asked, but he didn’t trust Mark, didn’t trust himself. So they took their time.

Mark emailed him a few days after they talked. It wasn’t a serious email, just a YouTube link prefaced with _I thought you might enjoy this_ , all lumped today under the subject of _hi_.

But that was enough, a starting point or a new beginning or whatever they needed. The floodgates opened, so to speak. Back and forth and back and forth, they emailed links and stories, sometimes copying Chris or Dustin or both of him, but at the core it was him and Mark and far too many nights spent staring at his computer screen.

(He still has the first email saved, buried in a folder called “Expense Vouchers,” because he may be a sap but if Mark— or, god forbid, Dustin—found out he would never live it down.)

One night, out at a benefit dinner that was so boring he actually felt himself aging by the second, he typed out a message on his phone— _oh my god I think I’m actually dying of boredom_ —and, before he could second-guess himself, texted it to Mark.

(Because they were friends again, he reminded himself as it sent. They were friends and friends did things like that.)

 _that sucks. try imagining everyone there in their underwear?_ came Mark’s quick reply.

There was only one appropriate response to that: _THERE IS NOT ENOUGH ALCOHOL IN THE WORLD TO MAKE ME FORGET THAT MENTAL IMAGE._

All of it was such a very long time coming, he thinks. And, in hindsight, it’s fitting that things fell into place slowly, because tumbling headlong into everything hadn’t worked out for either of them. They’d ended up in too deep, tied into a convoluted mixture of friendship and business that pulled them both in too many directions.

(For all that they had dived into their college friendship together, it hadn’t been an equal one, and everyone had known it. Mark asked and he gave and to this day he doesn’t know if Mark would have reciprocated, because he never asked for anything. He was too insecure to ask, afraid that being less than perpetually helpful or actually requiring effort from his them might scare off the amazing, brilliant people who liked him enough to include him.

He didn’t start learning otherwise until after the dilution, when Chris—and then later Dustin—stuck by him despite all the trouble it caused them. In that tiny way, it wasn’t all bad. He lost his best friend, but he learned that other people cared enough to make an effort. He learned that not being perfect wasn’t a deal-breaker for most people, that it was just his father who constantly demanded flawlessness and accepted nothing less. Chris and Dustin just wanted their friend, they assured him time and again. After a while, it stuck.)

The step from their casual, uninvolved relationship to something truer, more heartfelt (more like they’d had in college) happened (and it’s so fitting now, when he thinks about it, it comes back like a motif Chris would find in the novels he read, looping through the story and reappearing at significant moments) on his birthday. Their first all-night video game session cum heart-to-heart (not that he would have called it that at the time) happened on his birthday, as did the first time he admitted to Mark (to anyone) that being around his father made him feel worthless. (And so many more things will happen on birthdays, before he gets this rehashing to the present day, but he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself.)

Early—but not too early—on the morning of his first birthday after they started speaking again, his phone rang, a number he didn’t recognize but that its screen announced was from Palo Alto.

“Hello?” he said.

“Happy birthday, Wardo,” he heard Mark reply.

Softly, he answered, “Thanks.”

“Hey, _hey_!” another voice said, “I want you to have a happy birthday too, Wardo!”

He laughed and so did Mark, the easy comfortable laughter they’d always shared at Dustin’s silliness (the silliness Dustin often used for the purpose of creating their laughter, he knows, to defuse a tense room or break a stony frown).

“Thanks, Dustin,” he replied, still grinning.

“Hold on just a sec,” Dustin said frantically. He heard the soft noise of phone buttons being pushed, and then silence.

Suddenly, Dustin’s voice cut back in, saying “On three, okay?” then, after some assents, “One, two, three … Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Wardo, happy birthday to you!”

Except it wasn’t just Dustin and Mark singing, there was another voice he recognized just as well.

“Chris?” he asked, stunned or amazed or maybe just touched.

A cacophony of voices came from his phone, Chris’s cheerful _yeah, it’s me_ overlapping with Dustin’s exuberant _my idea, Wardo, to get all of us on a conference call_ with Mark’s sincere _I really do hope you have a good day_.

In that moment, with the four of them talking over each other even though they were on opposite sides of the world, with Chris berating Dustin for inappropriate self-promotion (but still laughing) and Mark chiming in that it didn’t matter whose idea the conference call was because it was _his_ idea to call at all, in that moment he realized just how much he missed this. Chris and Dustin and even Mark were his family, brutal and honest and sometimes disagreements made having everyone around a table awkward, but there was also acceptance and encouragement and unconditional love.

He felt his eyes water a little bit, then had a flash of happiness that no one had thought of doing a video chat. Finding the self-control to keep his voice from wavering, he said to them “Thank you so much. You guys are the best.”

(The next year, it was a video chat. Dustin made fun of him for crying.)

(The year after that, well, that’s the reason he’s sitting awake in the dark trying to make sense of the last few years of his life.)

Before his next birthday, though, the last of them (save Mark) left.

Dustin called him, after Chris and after he told Mark, but Dustin called him.

(For everything that had happened, he still knew how to read Mark, how Mark worked, maybe better than any of them.)

“Wardo,” Dustin said, soft and sincere, “I don’t want him to think I’m abandoning him because I’m not. I just really, really want to do my own thing.”

“Then don’t abandon him,” he answered. “You’ll still be in Palo Alto, right? So you guys can hang out or get dinner or whatever it is you do.”

“I’m just afraid that Mark will think me leaving means I don’t care about Facebook and that me not caring about Facebook means I don’t care about him.”

He nodded sighing once. “I think Mark has grown up, Dustin. He’s learned to tell the difference between caring about him and wanting to work at Facebook. Besides, you’ll still a shareholder, so it’s not like you’re going to want it to fail.”

“I wouldn’t want it to fail even if I weren’t a shareholder, Wardo!” Dustin rebutted, sounding offended.

“I know, I know,” he answered.

Mark didn’t call him when Dustin left, just sent a text message that said _dustin’s leaving_. He didn’t include anything as trite as a sad face, but then, he didn’t really need to. That he sent the text at all implied the sad face that someone else would have included (and it worried him at first, that he still knew Mark’s emotions so well, how he chose to express them through acknowledgement rather than through explicit description).

 _I know. I’m sorry_ , he sent back; then, after a moment’s consideration, he added _at least he’s not going far_.

Mark didn’t say anything else that night, but he didn’t worry. He worried at lot less about this grown-up Mark than he did about the Mark he knew in college. The Mark he got to know after their apologies could feed himself and swore he was doing his own laundry and remembered his friends’ birthdays.

He worries even less about he Mark he knows now, who smiles so much more easily and who texts him snide remarks from meetings instead of assuming that everything he thinks is worth saying.

Their first spat (because after the dilution and the depositions, they were hesitant to call anything a _fight_ , not when it would be compared with something huge and sweeping that threatened to ruin them forever) was over a shareholder meeting. He didn’t go to them, even after they started actually speaking. It stressed him too much—the offices, the memory of storming across them and hurling Mark’s computer, _Sean_ (Parker, not Eldridge, and he actually qualifies them in his mind because he barely tolerates the former but genuinely loves the latter for making Chris happy)—and he didn’t want to be reminded of that side of his relationship with Mark, not when they were just sorting things out.

But Mark wanted him to come, saying that he missed him and that the four of them could go out to dinner or something. He wasn’t ready (which he told Mark). Only Mark, for all his changes, is still Mark, selfish and a little controlling, and seeing the world from someone else’s shoes doesn’t come naturally to him. So he clung stubbornly to his resolution while Mark demanded that everything go his way, and they ended up yelling into their phones.

“God dammit, Wardo, am I not allowed to ask my friend to come visit? _Jesus_ ,” Mark asked, bitter and cutting.

“I told you already, I’m just not ready to go to the shareholder meeting!” And then he hung up, throwing his phone angrily into his sofa.

The next day, he texted Mark from a meeting, _sorry. I shouldn’t have hung up on you_. The reply was almost instantaneous (he still wonders if Mark had it saved, ready to send as soon as the lines of communication were open again). _i’m sorry i pushed you. if you’re not ready to come to the meeting, i shouldn’t force it_.

He goes to the meetings now, shows up early to visit Mark at his desk and leans over Dustin’s computer at the conference table with Chris (who comes despite his small share and calls it a founder’s privilege), giggling over whatever absurd video is making its rounds on the internet that week while Mark stares them down disdainfully. Sometimes he caves to the pressure and joins them, and they stand huddled together while the others enter, and it takes him back to Kirkland and FaceMash and how stupid they all were, but also to how they were young and bright-eyed and hopeful, dreaming of changing the world. It’s a memory no one else in the room is privy to, the very beginnings of Facebook and how its early days drew them so closely together, creating the type of bond that can withstand fights and share dilutions and lawsuits to end up back here again.

(After the meetings, they go out to lunch, just the four of them.)

He and Mark kept seeing each other at events, and sometimes he saw Chris or Dustin, but they never seemed to coordinate being in the same place at the same time, so it wasn’t until the first shareholder meeting he did agree to go to that they were all together again. They were draped messily over Dustin’s living room furniture (neutral ground or something) and not even buzzed because there was only a six-pack between them but maybe a little high on life.

The familiarity of it was nearly overwhelming, Dustin swearing and Chris gloating (but all the while sharing the next-to-last beer), and he wasn’t thinking about the last few years at all, not even a little bit. Instead, when Mark grabbed the last beer, took a swig, and then offered it to him, he accepted it without hesitation. It was imported, some fancy thing that Chris liked, not the cheap shit that was always in the mini-fridge at Kirkland (because, _Christ_ , they were all loaded now).

He took another pull and handed the beer back to Mark, then stretched lengthwise on the couch and flung his legs over Mark’s lap.

Immediately, of course, he regretted it. Were they comfortable enough together for him to do that? What if Mark was still antsy around him? What if he didn’t want Mark to think everything was okay because it wasn’t quite, not yet? Mark had never really liked all the touchy-feely stuff anyway and this friendship was still so brittle, so breakable, so _new_.

But then Mark curled his hand around the skinny ankle in his lap and thumbed softly at its pointed bone, and well, that was _really, really new_.

He didn’t say anything (for several reasons: first, didn’t want to startle Mark into breaking this fragile new comfort between them; second, he was entirely too lazy to move his legs; and third, he had _no fucking idea what to say anyway_ ). It wasn’t until much later, when he was half-asleep to the soothing rhythm of Chris and Dustin’s laughter, that Mark gently pushed the legs off his lap with a last fond touch ( _fond_? But there really wasn’t another word for a soft stroke of Mark’s palm across his skin). As he stood, he said quietly, “I need to head home. Apparently I have to be awake during the meeting tomorrow.”

(Dustin muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Screw that.”)

As for him, he gaped silently.

“If you fall asleep, Dustin,” Mark said flatly, “I’ll get Chris to hit you.”

“You didn’t tell Chris and Wardo to stay awake!” Dustin whined back.

Chris rolled his eyes. Mark just left.

It still baffles him sometimes, how much Mark grew up in the little ways. He still struggles with the broader aspects of taking care of himself from time to time—coding binges are not exactly uncommon—but on an average day, he remembers the important things, to eat and sleep at regular intervals and that he has meetings and responsibilities, all the stupid things that everyone else learns by the time they start middle school. He likes watching this new-and-improved Mark, all his genius and competence, but all that filtered through the vague understanding that just saying he deserves recognition isn’t enough, he has to earn it. (And Mark has earned it, demanded the respect of the real-world equivalents of the Ad Board.)

Somewhere between starting a world-changing company in his dorm room and becoming the world’s second-youngest billionaire, Mark learned a little bit about humility.

(It really, _really_ suits him.)

Sometimes, he’s kind of amazed it didn’t happen at Harvard, when they were living out of each other’s pockets (and they were kind of ridiculously horny, like, _constantly_ , because that’s pretty much a side-effect of being nineteen and male or maybe just nineteen because how would he know, he’s never been female) but mostly he’s glad it didn’t, because at nineteen he had no idea what he wanted and he’s pretty sure that all Mark wanted was Facebook. Maslow was kind of onto something with that self-actualization shit, because they’re so much more now than they were then. He can say _no_ and _stop_ and sometimes even _I’m worth more than my father thinks I am_ , and Mark can say _yes_ and _that’s interesting, tell me more_ (about things that aren’t code) and sometimes _I’m sorry_ and _I care about you_.

And if Mark can’t say those all the time, it’s okay, because he can’t say everything he needs to all the time, either.

He’s still rebelling, a little bit, because for all that he’s an investor—rich and successful and doing the job his father always wanted him to do—he’s investing in dot-com startups and websites and technology his father isn’t familiar with and distrusts, just a little bit. He loves it, though. The thrill of seeing a website go live, of knowing that he helped (in a small way) to make it happen. It’s not like Kirkland, not like seeing Facebook—thefacebook—go live, but it’s still a rush, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world.

(It was never about the money, not for Mark, not for him. Sometimes he thinks that they—and Chris and Dustin—are the only ones who really understand that.)

The day Dustin found out that Facebook had made him a billionaire, he sent the world’s most obnoxious email. _WARDOOOOOOOOOO_ , it said, _GUESS WHAT I AM AND MARK ISN’T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_ Signed, _Dustin “D-MAN” Moskovitz, World’s Youngest Billionaire_. He burst out laughing at his desk.

Five weeks later, when the four of them were pretending to be dignified enough to sit in Chris’s fancy Manhattan loft and Dustin was still bringing his new status up about once every thirty minutes, Mark finally turned toward him and said, “Jesus Christ, Dustin, if you don’t stop that, I’m going to dilute your shares until you’re not a billionaire anymore.”

At that, the whole room got tense, like the air was heavier. Mark turned toward him, eyes anxious and rubbing at his pants nervously.

“I’m so—” Mark started to say, but he cut him off with laughter, because seriously, it was funny and Dustin really needed to shut the fuck up about the whole thing.

“Can I have his extra shares?” he asked, throwing a pillow at Dustin’s head to forestall the impending whine.

“I was planning to give them to Chris,” Mark replied.

Chris, of course, nodded approvingly. “I think I’ve earned them more than anyone else, Mark. Do you know how much shit I cleaned up for you guys?”

They laughed, comfortable again, and the night carried on.

But Mark had turned to him, anxious and _ready to apologize_ , an actual honest-to-god apology instead of just an acknowledgement that he said something cutting or cruel. And it was eye-opening all over again, that maybe Mark hadn’t stopped being harsh but now he noticed he was doing it and sometimes cared enough to fix it, admit his wrongness. Everything shifted just a little more that night, the lenses lined up a little more to show him new-and-improved Mark, with added emotional awareness.

He should have seen it earlier, he knows, because the day Dustin emailed him to gloat, Mark had called him, voice hesitant but with his pride seeping through.

“Hi, Eduardo,” Mark had said when he escaped a meeting to answer his buzzing phone. “Congratulations on officially being a billionaire!”

“Thanks, Mark,” he replied. “I actually got a call about it as soon as Facebook’s new evaluation came out. And an email from Dustin where he computer-yelled at me.”

“Just,” Mark said, ignoring his lightness entirely, “Just tell your father to stick that in his pipe and smoke it. Or whatever. You’ve done better than he could ever have imagined you would. You helped change the world. If he still won’t look at you you’re worth more than two billion dollars, you’ll never please him and you should stop trying.”

He hadn’t really had an answer for that, except an awkward “Thanks. Um, I think.”

But he should have seen it clearly then, how growing up and living outside of computer labs and claustrophobic dorm rooms made Mark open himself up a little, that beyond just learning civility, he’d learned about people and their feelings (or at least how to express himself, he’d kind of always understood people).

Sitting on Chris’s couch, though, he saw it, all the changes and emotional maturity and confidence that was less arrogant self-assuredness and more earned faith in himself. (He wonders, sometimes, if the changes are a side-effect of second-guessing himself, if Mark had the capacity to do that now, the way he had after he froze the account because it was petty and childish and he knew all that and he did it anyway, but maybe it doesn’t matter so much because, whatever the impetus, Mark has grown up.)

And it hit him, there on the couch, like a smack in the face and a thousand other clichés, that he wanted to kiss Mark, just a little bit. They weren’t even touching, just sitting at opposite ends of the sofa and listening to Chris and Dustin banter.

He swallowed the feeling (that time), pushed it away into the back of his mind where he didn’t have to think about it because it surprised him. Mark had never been someone he was attracted to, just his best friend that he kind of had to mother and then someone he avoided speaking to as much as possible. Never a potential romantic interest. Never someone he _wanted to kiss_. Besides, he remembers thinking wildly later that night as he was curled into the spare bedroom of Chris’s apartment, isn’t his late twenties too late to have a gay crisis?

(He supposes now, with the benefit of some perspective, that there’s no such thing as too old. And his turned out to not be much of a crisis anyway.)

At the time, of course, he talked to Chris, because Chris seemed to have this whole sexual orientation thing figured out better than—well, better than he did, anyway. The next day, he was sitting at the bar that separated the kitchen from the big living area while Chris made himself a cup of tea. (He’d called dibs on the guest bedroom on the grounds that Mark and Dustin had even more money; it seemed to have worked out for the best.)

“Can I talk to you about something?” he heard himself say.

“Sure,” Chris answered, turning to face him and resting his mug on the counter. “Anything, anytime. You know that.”

(He has to be reminded sometimes, and he loves Chris for knowing that, for always having known that.)

It turned out, though, that actually saying the words wasn’t quite as easy as he’d hoped.

“I,” he began, and then stumbled. “I think that I need to … No, um, I had this …” He trailed off, unable to articulate the peculiarity of his unexpected desire to kiss Mark. ( _Kiss_ Mark, kiss _Mark_ , _kiss Mark_ ; no matter how many times he turned the words over in his head, they still felt they’d come from nowhere to drive him crazy with self-doubt.)

“Eduardo, I once helped Dustin through a crisis of sexual confidence. You cannot possibly say _anything_ that will shock me.”

He spat it out, let the words out into the air before he could hesitate again. “Last night, I wanted to kiss Mark.”

After a pause, he added, “I still kind of want to.”

“Oh,” Chris answered, his face unreadable.

Silence lingered around them for a few minutes, until Chris continued. “So, just to be clear, is this a gay freak-out or an I-want-to-kiss-my-ex-best-friend-who-screwed-me-over-but-now-we’re-friends-again freak-out?”

“Kind of both, I guess?”

Chris laughed, but not meanly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shrugged. “There’s not much to say. We were all sitting around last night, and then out of nowhere it hit me, like _holy shit I want to kiss Mark_. And, I mean, I’ve never wanted to kiss a guy before and I’ve _definitely_ never wanted to kiss Mark before.”

“First off, it’s okay. You know that, right?”

He nodded once, waiting for Chris to continue.

“Mark is a pretty attractive guy—not my type or anything, but he’s smart, funny when he isn’t mean, and he’s working on not being a giant asshole all the time. And you two were always ridiculously close. At school, more people asked me if you two were dating than about me and Dustin, and you know all about Dustin and his public displays of platonic affection.”

“People at school thought,” he started to say, but then thought better of it. It shouldn’t surprise him, he realized. They had spent a lot of time together, and he had put a lot of effort into taking care of Mark (to him it has always seemed maternal but it could probably have looked domestic to someone else).

Chris smirked. “Did you finally put that one together? Took you long enough.”

“It wasn’t like that at all!” he protested.

“Well, I know that, just like I know that Dustin and I were never like that. It didn’t stop the rest of the school from speculating.” Then Chris grinned, in the mischievous and slightly shit-eating way he’d picked up from Dustin at some point, and said, “Though now it looks like they were just precognizant. What with you wanting to kiss Mark and all.”

“Shut up, I came to you in my time of vulnerability and you’re being no help at all.”

Chris turned away, pouring the boiling water from the teakettle into his mug. “Okay then. What do you want my help with?”

He dropped his head into his hands. “All of it. I don’t know what to do. At all.”

As usual, Chris proved to be disgustingly helpful. He passed over his tea, saying first “This’ll help you calm down a bit,” and then “So, was last night the first time you wanted to kiss him?”

He sipped the tea, trying to bury his face in the mug, and nodded. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

Chris smiled kindly. “Wanting to kiss boys—or a boy, rather—is nothing to be ashamed of. And I’ll sic Sean on you if you keep that up.”

“I’m not ashamed!” he insisted. “Okay, I’m a little ashamed, but that’s because I wanted to kiss _Mark_. I’ve seen him after coding binges in college when he didn’t do laundry or shower, so it’s a little baffling to me that I can still be attracted to him. And I’m a little confused about being attracted to him period because I didn’t think I was into guys. So …”

(Mark does _his own_ laundry now, albeit reluctantly. When he expressed skepticism about that, Mark dragged him to the laundry room, motioning to the pile of unfolded clean clothes sitting on the dryer.)

Chris nodded understandingly. “Well, why don’t you give it a little time? See Mark again and figure out whether it was a one-time deal or if you want to kiss him all the time.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t see Mark again for a good while, not until the next Facebook shareholder meeting. In the meantime, of course, they emailed and texted and called. Sometimes, when the time zones and everyone’s schedules worked out, they would have four-way Skype chats (that were sometimes three-way Skype chats when Dustin was sprawled across the floor of Mark’s living room). Mostly, he just thought of Mark as a friend, someone he called when he had good news (and sometimes even when he had bad news), someone who emailed him funny links or texted him during boring meetings with the legal department (that were probably about the privacy issues which meant Mark really ought to be listening but oh well, he can’t ask for everything).

But then sometimes they would talk on Skype, just the two of them, or a picture would show up online, and it would hit him all over again (like one of those waves that comes up behind you at the beach and crashes on your head, he thinks, or maybe a gust of wind that catches you at a strange angle and throws you off balance), how he wanted to kiss Mark.

So it wasn’t something he thought about constantly (or even regularly) during those months. But it was something he thought about.

He texted Chris, after the fourth time he found himself thinking _god I really just want to kiss you until you don’t remember your name_ while Mark regaled him with tales of absurd programmers.

 _Chris_ , the text said, _I’m pretty sure wanting to kiss Mark wasn’t a one-time thing_.

The reply somehow managed to be both cryptic and helpful; _well then you need to figure out what you want to do about it_ , it said.

Of course, he is, and always has been, a giant chicken. (Which is probably the worst description ever, given _the chicken_ and the absolutely absurdity of that whole mess.) But regardless of his chicken-torturing habits, he was a wimp who didn’t want Mark to find out about his feelings. In hindsight, it’s entirely possible he was just a 14-year-old girl. (At least he never passed an anonymous note to him saying _do you like me yes/no pick one_.) The point is that he didn’t say anything, he in no way indicated to Mark his desire to engage in a little kissing between bros or _whatever_.

(It’s getting really late, and the weight of another person asleep half on top of him is distractingly warm and comfortable, like a blanket but with more nuzzling and soft exhales into his neck.)

He suspected, when he was first notified about the specific shareholder meeting he’s remembering, that Mark had scheduled it for that date on purpose. It was just after his birthday (and by extension, just before Dustin’s). There was clearly some sort of deeper meaning behind the choice of meeting days—but it was just so unlike Mark, to try and get what he wanted in a subtle, roundabout way.

At first he thought he was just reading too much into it (the company was due for a meeting anyway, it was _Mark_ so he’d probably just forgotten about the birthdays altogether, maybe someone else scheduled the meeting and just got Mark to sign off on it), but when Dustin met him at the airport, he was grumbling something into his cell phone about “won’t even ask for what he wants, Chris, it’s the most annoying thing ever. I never thought I’d miss him being totally straightforward about everything, but I swear to god I do—Oh, gotta go, Wardo’s here. See you tonight?”

Mark’s new shyness probably should have annoyed him as much as it frustrated Dustin, but it didn’t. He found it kind of … endearing.

He stayed for the whole slew of festivities, Mark’s big-deal work party (because being the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation meant that _everyone_ wanted to celebrate his birthday), Dustin’s much smaller work party, and the surprisingly calm gathering at Dustin’s house exactly in the middle, with their actual friends and presents that were less garish flaunting of wealth and more heartfelt consideration (except for the diamond-studded fencing foil Dustin gave Mark, but that was at least two-thirds a joke).

On the bottom of Mark’s card, he scribbled _next time, just invite me. I’ll come_ , and when Mark read the card he smiled huge and true and brilliant.

He had no choice but to smile back. (No one had a choice, not when Mark smiled like that.)

He’s smiling a little, just thinking about it. To his credit, he’s never denied being disgustingly smitten and it’s just—Mark doesn’t smile that much, but when he does his face loses its sharpness (without losing its intelligence) and he looks so innocently _happy_.

The voice in the back of his mind mocking him for being a giant sap sounds disturbingly like Dustin.

(It’s a little weird to have known someone so long and so well that they don’t actually need to be around for him to hear their sarcastic commentary, but it’s also kind of nice.)

He found out about the next shareholder meeting not from a rote notification in his inbox but from Mark himself, via a hesitant phone call.

“It’s, um, right before your birthday. I know you said I could just invite you but I thought it would save you the trouble of flying out twice, and this way Chris’ll be here too so we can all go out. Or we can stay in, cause you used to like that better. Whatever you want; it’s your birthday.”

“Thanks, Mark,” he said, smiling so hard his face hurt, “That’s really sweet of you. I’m looking forward to it.”

The time until the meeting was uneventful, filled as usual with work and family and friends. His stay in California was less so.

For his birthday, they did stay in. (Mark was right; he always had liked low-key nights of friendly company better than elaborate outings or wild parties. He thinks, when he actually bothers to think about it, that he probably wouldn’t have made an effort with the Phoenix if it hadn’t been for his father.)

(Mark would tell him not to underestimate his own ambition.)

They were at Mark's house, talking through the night like back at Harvard. Chris and Dustin had left some time earlier, but he and Mark were too enraptured by their ideas (by each other) to call it a night. And really, it was almost exactly like being back at school, except Mark's hand was curled around his ankle (again), warm and comforting, rubbing small circles with his thumb.

It was a lot like the last time Mark had done that, but this time Chris and Dustin weren't there as buffers, and he had the memory, fresh and sharp, of the first time he wanted to kiss Mark.

Sitting in the dark, Mark's fingers warm on his skin, the idea rose into his mind yet again. Kissing Mark.

It was still a new thought, sort of. Nothing he'd ever considered at Harvard or after, when everything was going so horribly sideways, and so much newer than all the hurt and anger and bitterness of the lawsuit. But in the calm darkness, with Mark’s hand wrapped warmly around his ankle, it lingered temptingly in the back of his mind, occasionally sending forward interesting tidbits such as _look, he just licked his lips_ or _I wonder what the skin on his neck tastes like_.

And Mark didn't look like he would be opposed to it as such. He could feel Mark's eyes tracing his face, shrouded in the darkness of the room, and the hand on his ankle tightened slightly.

He was feeling courageous, that night. In the half-light of the room, with the excitement of video game tournaments and too much cake and an evening spent in the company of friends lingering in his veins, it was easy to pull his legs gently off Mark’s lap and lean forward, brushing his fingers across Mark’s empty palm.

Mark—and at the time he wished desperately there was another word for it—Mark shuddered. His eyes closed briefly and he swallowed softly.

For someone still getting used to the idea of wanting to kiss his rapidly-becoming-best-again friend, that was a lot to handle.

(It was probably a good thing that Mark’s eyes were closed. Because he knows, now, what they look like when they’re blown wide and dark with desire and if he’d seen that, well, he’s not entirely sure what he would have done. But there’s a distinct possibility it would have involved pinning Mark to the couch and tearing all his clothes off.)

(There’s a possibility that’s what happened when he _did_ see that expression.)

Pulling his fingers off Mark’s wrist, he rested his hand softly on Mark’s shoulder, and then Mark leaned into the touch, and he was really definitely not projecting when he thought that he might not be the only one with romantic feelings in the room, because Mark turned his head to touch a cheek to the back of his hand and then turned it a bit father to press a kiss to it.

What happened next was easy, moving his hand to the back of Mark’s neck, leaning forward, and kissing him; he blames the delicate intimacy of the hand-kissing and also Mark’s face for existing (all sharp angles and intelligent eyes and dimples).

Besides, Mark leaned into the kiss immediately, reaching around to the back of his neck and pulling him closer. He bit Mark’s lower lip, following his teeth with his tongue, and Mark hummed into his mouth.

And then Mark was pushing him into the back of the sofa, straddling his thighs and kissing him in a way that could best be described as licking into his mouth (only with a bit more teeth in the _most wonderful way possible_ ).

He rested his hand on Mark’s cheek, running a thumb along his cheekbone. Mark sighed, pressing another kiss to his hand, and then whispered, “Happy birthday, Wardo,” into his ear before climbing off his lap. He ran a hand across his face, and then added, “I’m going to bed now. Is that okay?”

He nodded dumbly.

A couple minutes later, as he was attempting to gather the energy to pry himself off the sofa and head to the guest bedroom he was occupying, he heard footsteps coming back down the stairs.

“Wardo,” Mark said, “I, um, I think that wasn’t the right place to leave things.”

He stared.

Mark continued speaking, hesitantly, from the foot of the stairs. “I’m still kind of shit at this people thing, but I’m really trying and, uh, I don’t want you to think that I only kissed you because it’s your birthday.”

“Oh,” he said, unable to form other words.

For a long moment, Mark looked at him, his eyes calculating and sharp. Then he squared his shoulders, said “Oh, fuck it,” and walked away from the stairs.

Before he had completely processed the information that Mark might want to kiss him possibly _all the time_ , well, Mark was leaning down and kissing him again.

It was softer than before, just the press of Mark’s lips against his and Mark’s hand curling around his neck. He tugged against the front of Mark’s hoodie until he was being straddled again, the weight in his lap comfortable, his hands running up Mark’s back.

Falling into the kiss was even easier than he’d thought it would be, Mark’s body warm against his and Mark’s hands tangling in his hair. He thought, absently, about all the time he’d wanted to kiss him recently, about everything they already knew about each other and how well they had always fit together. The hardest thing about it, he knows, is going to be keeping his head above the water, not letting his old and overwhelming affection for Mark overtake him.

When Mark pulled back to breathe, he heard himself whisper “hi” and ran a hand over the soft hair at the back of Mark’s neck.

“I kind of want to do that all the time,” Mark said, then blushed and leaned forward, burying his face against the back of the sofa.

Mark was a little tipsy, not really drunk, just buzzed enough to be open and slightly gigglier than he would ever be sober. And he still hadn’t moved, was settled comfortably in the lap beneath him.

Grabbing Mark’s shoulders to pull his face out of the cushions, all he said was “Me too.”

“Oh,” Mark said, and kissed him again.

Things sort of … progressed from there. And quickly, too. There was a lot more kissing, like, a _lot_ more kissing. And then he did get to see Mark’s eyes wide dark with desire and he did push Mark down into the sofa, tugging a little frantically at the button of his jeans, but Mark pushed him off, muttering “bed” tersely.

(He wonders whether it was smart, going this quickly, whether he should have held off and taken things more slowly.)

Everything’s kind of a blur after that, a smudged recollection of stumbling up the stairs while running his hands over every part of Mark that he could reach and stopping to press Mark into (or have Mark press him into) the wall for a thorough kiss. He knows they eventually fell into Mark’s bed, half-clothed and kissing and just this side of desperate.

The rest doesn’t really matter, because Mark is curled next to him, legs tangled with his and smiling even in sleep.

And he’s happy, stupidly happy in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever been before (not at Harvard or before or after). Yeah.

He nods to himself. The rest doesn’t matter.

Mark nuzzles against his shoulder, pushes against his torso. “Wardo,” he says, words hazy with sleep, “Go to sleep.”

And then, because Mark really is quite good at getting what he wants, he adds “I want you alert for my exciting morning plans tomorrow.”

He doesn’t really have it in him to resent that particular form of manipulation. Sliding deeper into the bed, he rests his head against Mark’s and goes to sleep.

(Okay, he kisses Mark’s forehead first. But that’s between him and Mark’s forehead; no one else needs know.)


End file.
